Ellie Harrison - the popcorn machines, 'History of the Financial Crises', have been shipped off to Japen to be part of the 'Money after Money | Credit Game' exhibition, featuring other artists including Andy Warhol, and Joseph Beuys opening on the 29th April 2013.

Sparrow+Castice - have recently been awarded an Arts Council England Grants for the Arts Award for more ambitious and touring works - congrats!

How proud are we at TRH? Our Kate Eagle has been awarded the 'Champion of Champions' title at this years Arts & Business Cultural Champion Awards for all her hard work with Thrift Radiates Happiness. WELL DONE, KATE!

ARTS AND BUSINESS CULTURAL CHAMPIONS AWARDS 2013

Business people awarded for outstanding contributions to the arts in the Midlands. On Friday 22nd March seventeen people from the Midland’s business community were awarded for their outstanding contribution to the arts at the Jaguar Land Rover Business Champions for Arts & Business event at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Prince’s Charity Arts & Business organised the event as a way to say thank you to those individuals who have enabled arts organisations in the region to continue to thrive. Hosted by ITV’s Business Correspondent, Mark Gough.

Nadia Dooner, Regional Manager at Arts & Business says ‘We awarded some fantastic partnerships which highlight the strength of relationships between cultural organisations and local business, particularly individuals who champion the benefits of working with the arts.’ Of those honoured, a special recognition was awarded to Kate Eagle of Aedas as being the ‘Champion of Champions’ for her work with Aedas Presents and Thrift Radiates Happiness, which saw the vacant Municipal Bank on Broad Street transformed into a contemporary arts space earlier this month. Ends

For further media enquiries and images please contact:Peter Collins, Arts & Business Midlands peter.collins@artsandbusiness.org.uk Tel : 07973 294 287 Notes to editors:Arts & Businesswww.artsandbusiness.org.uk Arts & Business is a Business in the Community campaign and registered charity in England (274040). Arts & Business sparks new partnerships between commerce and culture, connecting companies and individuals to cultural organisations and providing the expertise and insight for them to prosper together. The charity was founded over 35 years ago on the principles that a strong relationship between the arts and business worlds is mutually beneficial and encourages both to prosper. Business in the Community Stands for Responsible Business. Business in the Community is a business-led charity focused on promoting responsible business practice. It has a growing membership of over 850 companies and a further 10,700 companies engaged in its campaigns globally.

Aedas Aedas, a leading international design practice, offers services in architecture, interior design, master planning, landscape, urban design and building consultancy within Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas. We are committed to our core value of design excellence and are dedicated to research & development and sustainability. Our 27 global offices allows us to apply international expertise with local knowledge and delivery thus supporting the communities in which we work.

Aedas Presents Aedas Presents is the brainchild of Kate Eagle as Marketing Coordinator at global architectural practice Aedas and independent curator Charlie Levine. Key supporters include the Birmingham Institute of Art & Design at University College Birmingham, the Birmingham Library and the Royal Institute of British Architects.

It was founded to support and showcase the work of emerging artists, students and graduates from local universities and colleges and to help them get on the first rung on the career ladder. Aedas is a progressive practice dedicated to design excellence, sustainability and providing solutions for the built environment that benefit communities from around the world.

This ethos remains very much the way forward for the built environment and Aedas wanted to help invest in its future. One way of doing this was to find a way to engage with young up and coming talented designers and provide them with an opportunity to showcase their work. Helping them to climb that first rung of the design ladder will enable them to be seen and heard in what is a highly competitive work environment.Thrift Radiates Happiness Thrift Radiates Happiness is the first contemporary arts exhibition to be held at the Municipal Bank in central Birmingham, UK.

One of Birmingham’s most historic landmark buildings is set to open its doors to the public for the first time in ten years when it plays host to a captivating four day contemporary arts exposition.

From 14-17 March 2013 the former Grade II listed Municipal Bank on Broad Street will showcase a creative programme of drawings, images, sound and light, video and music from local, national and international artists.

Arts & Business (A&B) is a registered charity in England (274040) and in Scotland (SC039470).

www.thriftradiateshappiness.com Thrift Radiates Happiness are pleased to announce an additional partner – GRAIN. GRAIN is a new Arts Council England funded project initiative being led by the new Library of Birmingham. , officially opening in September 2013. Over the next two years, GRAIN working in collaboration with local, national and international partners, GRAIN will create a hub and network for photography and photographers in the West Midlands region. This new project will include research and development projects and a range of ambitious high quality opportunities all aimed to strengthen and sustain photography in the region. is a scheme that works with West Midlands based curators and photographers to help promote one another and the photographic opportunities in the region. Charlie Levine, Thrift Radiates Happiness curator, has been awarded the first of two GRAIN Curator’s Bursarys. The Bursarys have been established to help fund ambitious curatorial projects, to support the professional development of emerging and mid-career curators during strategic points in their careers, and to provide them with opportunities to take stock, expand and feed the development of new work. selected as the inaugural curator for this scheme. Based in Birmingham and London, Levine’s first GRAIN partnership is with recent graduate from Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, Julie Tsang who has been invited to photograph . Levine has invited Tsang into the Municipal Bank, a Grade II Listed heritage site in Birmingham that has been closed to the public for over 10 years. Tsang will has been invited to make a series of architectural studies of photograph the site before the Thrift Radiates Happiness exhibition goes into the building in March 2013. Tsang’s images will then be used by Levine in an online publication which mimics the official catalogue that accompanied the launch of the Bank back in 1917. A copy of Thithis s catalogue is held can be found in the Library of Birmingham archives. There is also an opportunity to ‘invest’ £2 at the exhibition, for your investment you will leave with a limited edition print by one of several artists/architects. Tsang’s work, as well as an image from the archives, is one of those limited edition pieces. Tsang’s photographs are beautiful and capture the slightly run down site’s former glory. Levine says, “Julie was an obvious choice for this project, her style is formal but she can really emote through her use of light. She is a rising star in the West Midlands art scene and we are very happy to have her, and GRAIN, as part of the Thrift Radiates Happiness project.” The Thrift Radiates Happiness exposition is a showcase a creative programme of drawings, images, sound and light, video and music from local, national and international artists. Other artists involved in the exhibition include Elly Clarke, Tom Crawford, Caitlin Griffiths, Ellie Harrison and Nicole Wilson. The Thrift Radiates Happiness title has been taken from an inscription found carved across a main beam within the building. All the art projects featured will appropriately focus on finance and investment Entry to the three day event, being held at the former Municipal Bank Building on Broad Street, Birmingham, is free. This is the first time that the Grade II listed building has been open to the public in ten years. The event is the result of an arts and business collaboration between Birmingham based gallery TROVE, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the Birmingham Architectural Association (BAA), Birmingham City Council and global architect practice Aedas. It has been funded by The Arts Council, RIBA and Aedas. Alongside the art exhibition there will be an extensive educational programme provided by the BAA and RIBA, including a public debate, heritage tours and a student design competition. Visit www.thriftradiateshappiness.com Ends

When the Bank's Committee of Management decided that the BMB would need a design that would become known throughout the city, the students at the School of Art (right) were asked to submit designs. The Bank's Chairman (Councillor C T Appleby) offered a prize of Five Guineas (£5.25) for the best submission, and the School of Art's director laid down three conditions for the design:

- entries to the competition to be limited to designs submitted by students attending the School of Art, or the branch schools;- the designs to be suitable for reproduction, if desired, in enamel;- the Bank to own sole rights to the design.

Britain's First Municipal Savings Bank relates what happened next:

A large number of designs were submitted, many showing marked initiative and ingenuity. The committee spent a considerable portion of one morning in examining and criticising the designs, and ultimately decided on the one submitted by Mr E G Barnes, which was duly registered.His conception of a key with the simple but effective slogan "Security with Interest" appeared to meet the case. Little could he have thought that his design would be so prominently displayed and so well known as it is to-day. It explains in the simplest language what the Bank stands for. Other designs submitted had considerable merit, and were also accepted for propaganda purposes.

The logo was used extensively, including large versions that were fixed outside branch premises, and which were illuminated at night. In many of the pre-war photographs of branches, the key is hung at right-angles to the building's facade. Two exceptions are Aston Cross and Nechells, where the key is hung flat against the branch's facade at first-floor level; both of these branches also have the key design on window panels (a practice also adopted with the glass panels of the doors of the city's trams).

The externally affixed keys were removed from branches (possibly during the war?), but all branches came to have the design on their windows. It was also a feature of the internal decorations of the Bank's Head Office in Broad Street.